Agricultural cultivators are well known in the art. Cultivators are mobile agricultural implements. They are either self-propelled or, more frequently, designed as trailers to be attached to and pulled behind a tractor. They are equipped with cultivator blades that engage rotatingly in the soil. A multiplicity of these cultivator blades or cultivator elements or cultivator tools are attached to the agricultural cultivator side by side (as viewed perpendicular to the pulling direction).
DE 805 821 C1 addresses the aspect of making such a cultivator adjustable to various operating widths. In the fields to be worked, the rows, or furrows, that are to be worked with the cultivator elements also lie side by side at different distances from one another, depending on the type of crop being grown. The condition of the soil in the field to be worked may also make certain spacing recommended during cultivation, and it is of course necessary for the user, more particularly the farmer, to be able to use the cultivator for all of his fields, that is to say, for different distances between plant rows.
DE 42 34 432 A1 describes a method for controlling the relative positions of cultivator tools on an agricultural cultivator and a device for implementing the method. In said method, the cultivator tools and their positions are preset, and the correct setting is then readjusted in the field using detectable elements, which are placed there in advance and are spaced a predetermined distance from one another.
In the past several decades, a further practical aspect has been added as a requirement that must be considered in modern agricultural cultivators. During transport from the agricultural enterprise, for example a farmyard, to the field that will be cultivated, farm paths or country roads must be used. In either case, the overall width an agricultural cultivator may have is very limited. In some circumstances, field paths can be very narrow, and even on roads, certain widths may not be exceeded. It is therefore necessary for the agricultural cultivator to be collapsible or foldable, typically down to a width of about 3 m, for purposes of transport. In earlier times, this was not a problem, since cultivators as such were not particularly wide even in the field. However, over time this has changed considerably, and today, simply for economic reasons, it is important to be able to cultivate substantially larger areas simultaneously using the same implement, within a shorter time. It is therefore necessary for the agricultural cultivator to have a working width of 12 m, for example, in the field when cultivating work is being carried out, in order to allow a lane measuring 12 m in width and containing numerous rows or furrows lying side by side to be cultivated simultaneously, or to allow a field measuring 12 m in width or a section of field measuring 12 m in width to be cultivated completely in a single pass.
The agricultural cultivator can then be used to cultivate sugar beet, corn or potato fields, or fields with other crops that are planted in rows. This cultivation involves particularly removing weeds from these fields by the cultivating process.
In order for this to happen, the cultivator must be transported in its narrow transport width to the field, where it is then suitably enlarged to its working width. The multiplicity of cultivator elements must then be mounted on the cultivator in the field. In that case, these cultivator elements must all be attachable equidistant from one another, with the size of this distance then being dependent on the type of field. With this mounting, each of the cultivator elements is positioned in such a way that each cultivator element will run precisely on, or more specifically, precisely along the side of, a row of plants, where it will perform its work.
It is therefore necessary to be able to widen the cultivator suitably from its transport width to a working size. To address this problem, cultivators already exist which have a frame that permits a width of 12 m in the field, and which can be folded together to a width of 3 m for the transport route. Proposals for such folding mechanisms likewise exist.
These folding mechanisms naturally are necessarily accompanied by a need within the maximum width, for example 12 m, for points at which parts of the frame must be folded in some way, thereby forming and changing angles between frame sections.
As a result of this, the cultivator elements cannot be mounted until the cultivator is in the field and the frame has been unfolded, more specifically until all folding and unfolding movements have been carried out. And once the work of the agricultural cultivator in the field has been completed, but before the frame is folded back up, the cultivator elements must then be removed in order for the frame to be folded together and the agricultural cultivator to ultimately be returned along the transport route to the agricultural enterprise.
Farmers and other users find it less desirable to perform the task of mounting the elements in the field. Rainy weather conditions make it more difficult there. Furthermore, appropriate mounting tools must also be carried along to the field in order to perform the mounting task there. It is a further disadvantage that valuable working time during daylight hours is wasted performing the mounting task in the field.
As a compromise, farmers frequently attempt to mount at least some of the cultivator elements on the frame in advance, under the more favorable conditions existing at the agricultural enterprise. At the enterprise, appropriate barns or other buildings are typically available, in which abundant tools are available and in which this job of mounting can be easily performed, even under artificial light and/or poor weather conditions, in a dry environment and with adequate lighting.
Of course, before performing the mounting, the user must already know what type of field the agricultural cultivator will next be traveling to perform its work, and how far apart the individual rows of plants are there. Of course, this information is typically available to the agricultural enterprise. Even so, only a small number of cultivator elements can be mounted under these more favorable conditions, more specifically elements which, assuming the positioning on the frame has been calculated properly, are located on parts of the frame that will not impede unfolding during the subsequent folding process, or which do not lie too close to the folding points, if possible.
If the farmer limits himself to this mounting, a significant number of the necessary cultivator elements are not installed, resulting in decreased effectiveness of the agricultural cultivator during field work, since a number of plant rows will remain completely uncultivated.
And if this is to be avoided, there is no getting around the step of mounting the additional cultivator elements, which requires carrying the necessary tool along and working under unfavorable weather conditions.
It has even already been proposed to solve this problem by adjusting the spacing between plant rows to the spacing for later cultivation with agricultural cultivators. However, this highly contrived solution does not allow the plants to be planted at the economically most logical or effective distance from one another, with a potentially adverse effect on plant growth and crop yields. Thus with an approach of this type for addressing the technical problems of the cultivators being used, it may actually be possible to achieve a higher yield from the same field, planting the same crop.
This current situation is problematic.